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He chuckles. “I knew you’d be a slave driver.”
I’m not going to lie. I’m a total slave driver. “Whatever.” I hand him plates and napkins.
We settle at the table and dig into our pizza. Meat lovers, my favorite!
“You’re quiet tonight,” I say when he hasn’t spoken for at least five seconds. What? Silence is the enemy.
“Just thinking.”
Thinking is bad. Thinking is the enemy. Thinking is when all your skeletons rattle on your closet door until you open it to let them out.
“About what?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in hearing about.”
How wrong he is! I want to learn every nugget of information about this guy I can.
“Come on,” I push. “Give me something.”
He shakes his head. “Feeling out of sorts today is all.”
As if I’ll be satisfied with such a lame answer. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Liar. But before I get a chance to call him out, he clears his throat and heads me off at the pass. “Tell me why you need my manual labor to help label your beer. Don’t they have automatic labeling machines?”
I study him for a moment before deciding to let my curiosity go – for now. “The bottle label applicator I have my eye on costs nearly a thousand dollars.”
He chokes on his pizza. “As in a one followed by three zeros?”
“Brewing is not a cheap hobby.”
“Is brewing a hobby for you, though? I thought it was a business since you’re selling to bars and all.”
I open my mouth to tell him I sell exclusively to McGraw’s, but it would be a lie. Since the New Year’s Eve party, a few other bars have placed orders too. Including tonight’s order for a hundred bottles of my Short but Stout beer.
I don’t have an answer for him. My relationship with brewing is complicated. Brewing wasn’t always a dream of mine. It was a dream of Toby’s – the asshole king of all asshole exes. When things ended, I continued brewing because I actually enjoy it, but do I want to make Shorty’s Brewing Sensation a full-time thing? Frankly, I don’t know.
“Come on.” I stand. “Those bottles won’t label themselves.”
He follows me outside to where my shack is located. It’s not really a shack. It’s a double garage I’ve converted into my ‘brewery’. I unlock the door and motion for Grayson to enter before me. His eyes widen as he looks around.
“Wow. This is not a hobby, Munchkin.”
Confession. I love it when he calls me munchkin. I know I shouldn’t, but who wouldn’t love it when a hot man has a pet name all for them? No babe, or baby, or honey for me. Nope. Munchkin is all mine.
I slide a box out from under one of the tables, but before I can lift it, Grayson is there taking it from my hands.
“These are the labels,” I say and then point to the bottles of beer lining the shelves above the table. “And those are the beer bottles we need to label.”
Grayson opens the box and removes a roll of labels. “Huh.”
My brow wrinkles. “Huh? What? Is there a problem with them?” Shit. I need to deliver this order to the bar in two days. I don’t have time to re-order labels.
“It’s nothing.” Grayson shakes his head. “I guess I expected something different is all.”
I peer around him at the labels. I admit they’re a bit simple. There’s a picture of a beer bottle and my brewery name, Shorty’s Brewing Sensation, and the name of the beer, Short but Stout. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not what you would call ‘artistic’.
“What’s wrong with them?”
